“I do not know that there was much to tell,” he retorted roughly. “Of course, it was unpleasant for him to be arrested, but I should not think that need trouble him very much.”
“It is not merely the arrest. He has had a great deal of worry all along, ever since his attempt to introduce these new ideas.”
It seemed to Johann that he was being attacked.
“And whose fault is that?” he demanded. “It is the Ministers who refuse to obey his orders and who raise all kind of obstacles to everything which the King wants done.”
“I dare say they do; I have no doubt they are very much to blame,” returned the composer quietly. “But I am not looking at the matter from a political point of view, but as the King’s personal friend; and when I see him worried and ill, I have a right to feel concerned. I have known the King longer than you have, and I know that he is of a very sensitive temperament, and ought not to be exposed to troubles of this kind.”
Johann’s manner became still more hostile.
“I think, sir,” he said with some bitterness, “you have shown pretty plainly from the first that you have not much sympathy with the cause that the King has pledged himself to support. You no doubt would rather he continued to spend his time in building sumptuous palaces, and in listening to operas. But I believe that he has at last awakened to his real duty in life; and no matter what it may cost him at first, I believe it is better for him to go on with his task than to sink back into the condition of a sybarite, with no aim beyond his own selfish pleasures.”
Bernal flushed under these severe remarks, but he resolutely kept his temper.
“All that may be so, Herr Mark,” he replied; “at all events I am not going to dispute it with you. If King Maximilian were an ordinary man I should not say another word. But what I want you to remember, when you are urging him on to all kinds of violent measures, is this, that if you press things too far, if you harass him beyond a certain point, the result may be such as you little think of.”
Johann stared at him bewildered.